Comedian Steve Hoffstetter On Hecklers, Bachelorette Parties, and His Very First Joke in Reddit AMA

Earlier this week, writer and stand-up comic Steve Hofstetter captured the attention of Reddit’s Videos community with some good old-fashioned heckler-heckling in a small bar in Titusville, Fla. But lest anyone think he doesn’t want to engage with his audience, he held an impromptu AMA (Ask Me Anything), answering (almost) every question, from fans and haters alike.

In the now-viral video that inspired the AMA—appropriately titled “Heckler doesn’t stand a chance”—a woman from the audience interrupts Hofstetter’s (relatively benign) bit on bad parents to ask what she must’ve thought was a demoralizing curveball: “How many children do you have?”

Fans of Hofstetter—whose YouTube channel features over 100 clips of his responses to hecklers—know what inevitably follows.

He answers the woman’s question politely, but unfortunately for the proud mother, her interruption plays right into the heart of his material—and inspires him to ad-lib a few perfectly timed, analogy-filled punchlines directed at parents everywhere (at least the bad ones).

Without spoiling the jokes, here’s the clip:

After the video earned millions of views, Hofstetter invited redditors to send him all the questions they just couldn’t keep to themselves. The result was a long, wide-ranging conversation about heckler philosophy, the role of “political correctness” in comedy, and pizza.

Check out the original AMA thread to read all of Hofstetter’s (many, many) answers to redditors’ (many, many) questions. His latest stand-up special, Ginger Kid, is available for free on his YouTube channel.